The Turning of the Screws
by mycove
Summary: Varian has been taken by Cassandra, but does she realize how much each of her actions would add a new turn of the screws to the boy's tortured mind ? One-shot. Flashbacks of "Cassandra's Revenge".


**Are you in for some angst ? I sure am ! Come on, you can't tell me that the events of "Cassandra's Revenge" didn't leave Varian unscarred. It sent my crazy little mind reeling again XD**

**Hope you'll like it !**

The wind was howling.

It was the middle of the night and Varian couldn't sleep. No matter how hard he tried, his eyes would stay wide open in the dark.

Not that the boy had always been a sound sleeper anyway. Over the years, many things have kept him away from resting peacefully. When he was young, that would often be his experiments and projects, buzzing in his head night and day. Then he became more and more plagued by the desire to prove himself and make his father proud. And more recently came the excruciating mix of grief, guilt and shame, as he lost himself down the path of hatred.

Of course, many things in his life were clearly better now. The decision to stop trusting Andrew had been the best he had taken in a long while. Since then, he had been able to make amends to Rapunzel and the people of Corona, his father was alive and he even had more friends that he ever dreamed of. Most important of all, although he would never forget the dark deeds he had pursed, he was finally at peace with himself.

Until Cassandra showed up.

He hadn't realized at first how much she had changed. Sure, he had been told what happened during the Princess' journey but wrapping his young mind around it was an entirely different matter. Not very surprising, since the boy had always had more tolerance, more compassion for others than himself. For him, Cassandra couldn't be completely lost to them as a friend.

So when she took him… when she simply knocked him out with the flat of her blade without the slightest wince, and then drugged him with the truth serum while he was still unconscious, not a shred of remorse in her voice as she told him.… it seemed so unreal. That's when Varian started to feel knots in his stomach, and the fact that he was tied to a post, hands behind his back and helpless, didn't help.

He perfectly knew the effects of the Truth Serum – after all, he created it – but he hadn't anticipated how potent it was and how strenuous it would be to fight it. He tried, he really tried not to give away the translation of the Moon Incantation, not to her. But there was an invisible force that compelled him to speak, and resisting it felt like trying to stop a boulder rolling down a mountain at full speed.

Because of him, Cassandra became able to wield the power of the black rocks as easily as breathing. The stronghold she built with her sheer will was the terrifying proof.

But there would be more to come for the young alchemist. Plain and simple, he was bait to lure the Princess to his captor – oh, the irony. Cassandra needed him to walk up the seemingly endless stairs all the way to the top. So she untied him, but was swift to shackle his hands on front of him instead. Varian didn't have time to stand up, let alone pull away. All he knew is that his mind suddenly reeled and raced, and his hands started to shake at the not-so-alien feeling of metal against his wrists.

The weight on his slender arms, the permanent hold of the merciless cuffs, the clicking sound of the chain, everything reminded him of that first time when he was restrained that way. His breathing hitched as he remembered. The tipping point. That moment when he had lost everything.

If Cassandra noticed anything about his body language, she chose to ignore it. She was focused on her goal, and she had to be ready for Rapunzel and her friends when they would show up. There was no time to soothe the kid's nerves.

The shackles magically vanished once they reached Cassandra's lair, where it seemed safe to her to let the boy have a bit more freedom. He had nervously rubbed his sore wrists, the gloves offering absolutely no protection for the anxiety in his head. He was dreading that she would get angry at him and put the cruel restraints back on, but the words she said when they finally reached the top kept ringing in his ear.

_"__I don't want to hurt you"._

She is still the Cassie I knew, he thought. I know she's still in there.

He had the feeling he could read in her like an open book. Or was it just an illusion ? He had been there after all. The anger, the hatred. The pain. And the blindness that comes along.

He had been down that dark path and made his way back to the light. The last thing he wanted was to be there again, and thinking of it, talking about it, would be enough to make his mind swirl and drown again in emotions that were still too powerful for him to take.

But then again, Varian never knew when to do what was best for himself. And that was his friend, just there, lost in the dark and with no clue where it would lead her.

So he tried.

He pushed at the back of his mind the fear than racked his heart and sent shivers through his body as he gently, passionately, opened up to her and told her things he never told anyone, not even his father. What it was like to lose your way, lose the light, lose everything and everyone around you, only to suddenly be hit with the realization that you have nothing left to lose.

Varian may live one hundred years, he would never forget the feeling. The emptiness everywhere he would turn. The hopelessness from which he believed he would never recover. He couldn't let it happen to the Cassie he was so fond of. So he stripped his soul naked to her, and it hurt, it hurt so much but he didn't care. It was his only chance to reach her.

But she rejected him. Her sharp words stung much more than her sword threatened to. Again and again he desperately tried to knock some sense into her, despite the searing pain in his ribs after he was pushed away by a series of sprouting rocks. But all he was facing was a reflection of himself, just as shut and stubborn as he had been, and he couldn't find a way in any more than on a perfectly polished mirror.

Little did he know that the cracks were there, just underneath the surface. And that as soon as Cassandra felt that he was getting too close, she decided to block out his pleas.

Varian knew he had lost when the long, stone fingers circled him and confined him inside a cage that was so small that he couldn't stand nor lie down. Although it was a different prison than the castle's dungeon, Varian felt a twinge of panic in his heart. No, not again. A lump formed in his throat, and he felt he was losing control over his body once again.

He couldn't say a word when Cassandra knelt down in front of him and ruthlessly sent him outside, far from her, one hundred, two hundred feet above the ground. And there he was, all alone, his hair dancing wildy in the wind. It whistled relentlessly in his ears and made his tear-streaked cheeks feel cold. Varian curled himself up into a tight ball and silently sobbed until his eyelids felt so heavy he couldn't keep them open, and an unnatural yet welcome slumber claimed him.

So there he was now, safe and sound in his room and yet completely unable to sleep. All because of the wind that was raging outside. Curse it. Curse that wind.

Not just for the howling sounds it made. But for all the memories it brought back with every breath.

**As a side note, tiny cells have been (and unfortunately may still be) a way of torturing prisoners for centuries. And drugging an unconscious child ? Anyway, I loved using his past traumas, because they'd be bound to show up in this scenario. Now if you'll excuse me, I'll just go and hug our boy.**

**Let me know what you think !**


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